Fountain of the Four Rivers (Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi)

The Fountain of the Four Rivers, erected in 1651, is a masterpiece of public sculpture by Gianlorenzo Bernini, located in Piazza Navona, Rome in front of the Church of Sant'Agnese in Agone[1], and yards from its patron's family home: Pamphilj Palace. It was Innocent X, the Pamphilj pope, (1644-1655) who requested models for a fountain to grace the site.

So strong was the sinister influence of the rivals of Bernini on the mind of Innocent X that when he planned to set up in Piazza Navona the great obelisk brought to Rome by the Emperor Caracalla which had been buried for a long time at Capo di Bove for the adornment of a magnificent fountain, the Pope had desigss made by the leading architects of Rome without an order for one to Bernini. Prince Nicollo Lodovisio, whose wife was niece to the pope, persuaded Bernini to prepare a model, and arrange for it to be secretly installed in a room in the Palazzo Pamphilj which the Pope had to past. When the meal was finished, seeing such a noble creation, he stopped almost in ecstasy. Being prince of the keenest judgment and the loftiest ideas, after admiring it, said: “This is a trick … It will be necessary to employ Bernini in spite of those who do not wish it, for he who desires not to use Bernini’s designs, must take care not to see them.”

Paraphrase from Fillipo Baldinucci, The life of Cavalierie Bernini (1682) [2]

Fountains in Rome served two purposes, in the centuries before home plumbing, they were highly needed sources of water for the neighborhood. In the design, political and monumental statements, tributes to the patron and the papacy, were added. Two earlier Bernini fountains in Rome were the Triton fountain in Piazza Barberini, the fountain of the Moor in the southern end of Piazza Navona [3], and the Neptune and Triton for Villa Montalto, and now with statuary at Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

This fountain means to depict allegories for the four great rivers in four continents: the Nile in Africa [4], Ganges in Asia [5], Danube in Europe [6][7], and Rio de Plata in America [8]. Each has animals, plants, or river gods with sometimes akward racial physiques to carry forth the identification. Each has a river god, semi-prostrate, in awe of the central tower, epitomized by the slender egyptian obelisk (built for the Roman Serapeum in AD 81) [9], symbolizing by Papal power surmounted by the Pamphilij symbol (dove). In addition, the fountain is a theater in the round, a spectacle of action, that can be strolled around. Water flows and splashes from a jagged and pierced mountainous disorder of travertine marble. A legend, common with tour-guides, is that Bernini positioned the cowering Nile River god to comment on the Sta. Agnese facade of his rival Borromini.

The dynamic fusion of architecture and sculpture was revolutionary, when compared to prior fountains in Rome, such as the more academic Acqua Felice by Domenico Fontana in Piazza di Bernado (1585-87) or the customary embellished geometric floral-shaped basin below a jet of water such as the Fontanina, Piazza Campitelli (1589) by Giacomo della Porta, this was drama in stone. Della Porta also authored the Neptune and the Nereids fountain (Fontana di Nettuno)(1576) on the north end of Piazza Navona[10]. Later fountains, like Nicola Salvi's glorious Rococco Trevi Fountain (1748-49), weaker in program and sculpture, move even further into the scenographic display.